AirDog's ADII 'follow me' drone doubles down on action sports

If you think the drone in the picture above looks remarkably familiar, that's because the design itself is nearly identical to the original. Though there is one clear difference: the color. Out is the "it will grow on you" mustard yellow, and in is a new, cleaner off-white (the purple arms remain). Most of what's new is found under the hood or in the app.

If you popped the lid off an ADII, you'd fine a gyroscope magnetometer, barometric air-pressure sensor, accelerometer and GPS. All of these sensors are what ADII uses to stay locked on its target (that's you, BTW) up to a distance of 500 feet. Most of these things were in the original, as was the Lidar sensor to prevent it from smacking into the ground if you are bombing downhill. So what is new? Well, plenty, and most of it's about making those self-shot videos even better. (The gimbal is now three-axis, not two for starters, hooray!)

While the original AirDog was pretty good at following you, that's more or less all it could do. You could adjust its position in the air manually with the wearable "airleash" controller, but nothing like the level of control you'd get with ... well, a controller. ADII goes a decent way to change this with a feature called "3D Lines" (more on this in a bit) and scenic modes -- now you can get your establishing shots, hands-free, all with the same drone.

Two years ago, controlling a drone with basically a large watch (which is what airleash looks like) felt like an exercise in faith. You'd better hope there are no cables/trees/pedestrians around the corner, as you likely wo not have time to do much about the drone following you in hot pursuit. With ADII, you can create "lines" in the companion app (iOS and Android) ahead of time. Preset flight paths are not all that new, but the way AirDog has implemented them makes them especially useful.

In the app, you can pull up a map and start setting waypoints. Dragging these around allows you to create elaborate shots that move away from you or zig-zagging across your path. You can also use them to avoid buildings, hills and trees (just hope none have grown since the last time satellite view was updated).

The "3D" component comes from the ability to also determine the drone's height at any point along those lines. This serves the same dual-purpose of creativity (as the drone goes up, the camera stays fixed on you) and practical object avoidance. The AirDog app will also show you ground topology so you can see the hills and dips on your route and adjust the flight path accordingly.

Once your line is set, ADII will stick to it like glue, and only move forward or backward along that path as you progress along it. I got to see it in action behind the scenes at AirDog's promo video shoot at a cable wakeboarding park, which is pretty much the perfect use case. ADII was able to fly around the park well away from any wires while still pulling off creative maneuvers around the track. It also means you can fly in places that would not have been advisable before, through narrower canyons or roads with lots of switchbacks.

With ADII, AirDog is trying to turn the anxiety of not having a controller in your hands into a feature. Flying with a regular radio controller is fun but passive. With ADII, the goal is to have you embrace being in the moment without worrying about your drone. DJI tried to do this with Spark, but it's more of an add-on feature, and it shows (as I recently found out). If you do want to get more hands-on with the flight, the updated airleash comes with more controls (via long press of buttons) that can activate orbit modes or continuous (rather than incremental) movement in all directions.

ocelot0718h agoPlease do not give such people the title "indie developer" in fact do not even call them a developer. Who ever did this essentially got a fidget spinner put it into a tin can. Then also took a huge dump in the can. Sealed the can up and gave it a good shake.
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On top of that, the FCC has suggested that if mobile networks are providing this "broadband," all one needs is 10Mbps download and 1Mbps upload speeds. That's less than half of the 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up speeds currently required to fit the definition of home broadband.
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